Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Had enough of people buzzing the hell out of your apartment at 4:30 a.m., screaming obscenities and insisting on being let in??

Sorry. We won't come over anymore...

When you live in an apartment building with a buzzer-type / intercom entry, the most imperative part of inviting your rowdy friends over is having enough booze ensuring that they know the correct unit number or name on the intercom so they don't buzz the hell out of your neighbors!

Of course, some apartment buildings do NOT make this easy. Case in point:

A few years ago a local prostitute/drug sealer took to loitering around my building. As a result, miscreants of all stripes would hit our buzzer at all hours of the morning and night.

One night I had enough. I went to our living room window (which is conveniently located above the front door of our building) and poured out a pitcher full of water. I can't say it stopped the annoying behavior altogether, but it did reduce it considerably.

Aside from varying degrees of Ladies Of The Night, the guidelines are quite simple on this one:

DO:Know your intercom / buzzer!The tricky part is that, most often, the problem lies not with your guests but with you not knowing your own buzzer button so's you can give the proper guidance!

DO NOT:Simply give your friends your address, if that does not lead them fully to your door.

Example:Giving an apartment number doesn't mean a thing if your building has a resident directory that needs to be accessed by your name, or worse, by last name!

Think: Does your guest know you well enough to find you in an index arranged by last name? Are you only listed in said directory by your roommate's last name??

You really only need to do this once, people. Then it's only a matter of remembering it and clearly communicating to your newly-acquired "best friends" from the pub at 3:30 a.m... which is quite another challenge entirely.

4
comments:

I used to have alot of this same problem awhile back living in a dodgy part of Seattle, with an excess of wandering hookers and strip club fans. Thank god for Seattle winters cold enough to keep them indoors for a few months at a time.

I started a web service called Buzzeromatic that takes your doorbuzzer and makes it smarter - it lets you add passcode-entry to your door for the drunk friends (and make the passcodes only work at a certain time of day), as well as a slew of other stuff. We'll be releasing a feature soon to let you totally turn your doorbuzzer off at night, too, to hopefully help out other sleep deprived folk getting terrorized by coked-out ladies of the night. We'd love to get some feedback from other folks having the same problems

Sorry, Angus. Perhaps you'd be more entertained here or even here, because you obviously have neither a.) laughed before or b.) lived in an urban apartment with buzzers.

p.s. - take a look around, bro. Not only are there awards hanging here to prove your opinion is in the minority, but this is also a humor blog about ETIQUETTE. Y'know, as in, "how to behave?" And buzzer-beating is effing rude. So piss off, ya nunce.